Like many other people, I enjoy a good “Chuck is high” joke. Who doesn’t love watching Chuck thrash around in his seat while watching fights? Or when he goes on talk shows completely fucked out of his tree on random medications? And hey, now lets add “showing up to award shows looking like he smoked all the weed in Vancouver”. Hang ten, Chuck. Hang ten indeed.

As with all things media related, I must bow to the MMA Fever boys for this pic. Someday I’ll buy them out and then fire them, Pride-style. Then they will re-emerge with another random website and I will go “Curses! Well at least I have the tape library.”

The big news in Finance land is that Zuffa’s credit rating has dropped from a BB to a BB-. If you aren’t a monocle wearing banker, you might not know what that means. In an effort to pretend to know what we’re talking about, we went to the poor man’s encyclopedia (Wikipedia is da bomb!) to do a little bit more research on Bond Credit Rating. What I read will shock and disturb you to the very core of your being! Or not. It’s actually pretty dull.

The credit rating of a corporation is based on their credit worthiness relative to it’s annual income compared to it’s debt. So that’s how much they make vs how much they owe. Of course, debt is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes companies use debt as a reflection of their future purchasing power. Credit Rating Agencies take stock of a company, and assign different ratings based on the relative financial risk of investors … aka is this company gonna tank and keep my cheddah?

Zuffa had a BB rating, which indicated a high risk, or “speculative” rating, but has since been downgraded to BB-. Why? Well, I can only guess that it was do to stagnant growth caused by:

a string of shitty fucking cards we’ve been handed

the feces sandwich that is “interim belt” fights due to constant injury or steroid “malfunctions”

“Contender” bouts (if they give us another “top 5″ fight, I’m personally going to kidnap White’s children and sell their organs to the Chinese).

Burning a big pile of money labeled “UK Expansion”

Big stars falling

New stars stalling

Dana White being a smelly head

Credit Rating Companies also usually try to also offer guidance as to where the future of the rating might sit. So far, things are looking pretty neutral, which means that unless they change their tune, it’s likely to fall again.

So the summary is this: According to Credit Rating agencies, Zuffa is a high risk company that doesn’t show signs of getting more stable. Fair enough. But before we go shitting all over it, consider that Microsoft doesn’t even have a AAA rating. At the very worst, fewer retards will be lending money to the company. On the positive side, this could stop Dana and Zuffa from thinking that everything they touch turns to pure gold. This could mean more interesting and relavent PPVs and better matches being made more consistantly.

On Mr Sunshine’s radio show, Ben Saunders talked about how he was ultra-sick and tripping balls off medication for his TUF fight last night. You can listen to the audio here, but the gist of it is that Ben took a bunch of drugs lying around the house from other fighters to try and create a nice combo that would take care of his sickness plus counteract all the different drug side effects. To paraphrase:

“My number one goal was to impress Dana White, and my number two goal was to win the competition. I might have gone in and lost the fight, but I had a feeling like if I hadn’t gone in, my career would have been over.”

Hey, props to Ben Saunders for doing what he felt he had to do to keep his career rolling (even though it was fucking stupid). On the other hand, fuck the UFC for consistantly putting people into a position where they have to do shit like this. It’s situations like this that makes Hermes Franca’s decision to use steroids seem a bit more understandable.

Fedor: I would like to fight champions in other MMA organization like Randy Couture, Gabriel Gonzaga and champions of UFC, Cage Rage and IFL etc.

Let’s get something straight, Fedor: if you wanted to fight the big guns, you could have. IN THE UFC. Guys outside the UFC who call out UFC fighters drive me nuts, especially guys who had the option of fighting in the UFC but decided not to. Nick Diaz had the opportunity to head back to the UFC. Instead he signed a long term deal with ProElite and now enjoys safe harbor as he talks smack on all the UFC guys he thinks he could beat. Matt Lindland does the same … he consistantly says he’d love to kick Anderson Silva’s ass, but he refuses to consider any kind of deal with the UFC that would be exclusive.

Hey, sure: all these guys have their reasons for not wanting to be in the UFC. Nick is still pissed that Dana White tried to get him on Blind Date. Lindland would have to take a pay cut until he proved himself again in the Octagon. And there are countless guys like Frank Shamrock who just fucking hate Dana White and will never come back no matter what. But for fuck’s sake, stop ‘challenging’ guys you’re not going to fight. It’s just lame.